It’s hard in the heat of any given moment to tell flash-in-the-pan hits from songs that will last. But from the distance of almost fifty years it’s safe to ask: who were the great songwriters of the 60’s? Dylan, Lennon/McCartney, Marvin Gaye and all the Motown guys, Joni Mitchell. And Burt Bacharach, who may be…
Ten Lost Romantic Gems of the ’60s
Without resorting to research, I tried to remember ‘60s love songs I hadn’t heard in years due to their falling off the radar. Half of these I used to sing, the others remain stuck in my heart. 1. “A Woman is a Prism (And Not Made of Stone)” (Eric Andersen) This old folkie might be…
Musical Athleticism
I am no fan of music athleticism, be it in rock, jazz or classical music. By athleticism I mean aspiring to and celebrating music on the basis of its being high, fast and tortuous, and therefore very difficult to perform. Musical athleticism should not be confused with virtuosity, the general mastery of an instrument. The…
Learning To Lose
“She knows there’s no success like failure And that failure’s no success at all” –B. Dylan Love Minus Zero/No Limit A month ago I was on a roll. It started when I became frustrated with the glacial pace my memoir had been taking as it crawled from agent to editor and back to me, sleaker…
Guilty Pleasures: The Carpenters
I was watching the horror movie “1408,” based on a Stephen King story. I was pleasantly surprised to find it better than the reviews had led me to expect. John Cusack stars as a ghost story debunker who finally finds a story he can’t debunk in hotel suite 1408. The wicked spirits that haunt the…
A Conversation with Captain Trips
“What a long strange trip it’s been,” Robert Hunter, “Truckin’” Forty years ago this weekend, on July 3rd 1970, I spent a couple of hours talking with Jerry Garcia. I was 19, and he was as close to a hero as I had. How my own journey came to brush up again the Grateful Dead’s…
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